Maristella Botticini, Northwestern University

By using a sample of 209 marriage contracts for a Tuscan town between 1415 and 1436, the paper intends to study the dowry system by taking into account the double facet of the dowry as a marriage payment and as an intergenerational transfer. When considering the dowry as a marriage payment, the issue is what the bride parents pay for in the marriage market. To address this issue, the paper suggests and tests the present net value hypothesis, according to which the dowry represents the present net value of a womanÕs contribution to the future householdÕs utility and income. The model predicts that, ceteris paribus, the larger the present net value of the brideÕs contribution in the future household, the smaller the dowry her parents have to provide. The estimation does not provide decisive support to this hypothesis. When considering the dowry as an intergenerational transfer, the issue is whether parents are altruistic towards their daughters. By partly following the adaptation by Rao (1993) of RosenÕs implicit market model, the paper suggests and tests a model in which bride parents may provide their daughters with dowries both for selfish and altruistic reasons. First, parents may care about maintaining and, possibly enhancing, their own economic, social, and/or political standing. The dowry is then the price to get a good match in the marriage market. Second, parents may truly care about their daughtersÕ well-being. When social norms prohibit female descendants from receiving bequests, the provision of the dowry at the time of the marriage is the sole occasion for parents to show their altruism towards their daughters. The results of the regression seem to provide positive support to a ÒcautiousÓ intergenerational altruism by the parents towards their daughters. As a by-product, the paper shows which variables affected the size of dowries in fifteenth century Tuscany.